Unlocking the Secrets of Boxwood Miniatures

Dutch woodcarvers once sculpted slivers of boxwood into biblical scenes smaller than walnut shells, and for a few decades in the 1400s and 1500s, elite clients, including Henry VIII, vied to own the miniature works. Yet no one seems to have recorded much about the sculptors’ techniques or even their names. In notes from the 1630s about an antique boxwood sphere with portraits of martyred saints, a Dutch art collector lamented, “It is regrettable that the maker of this ingenious piece has not made himself known with any sign.”

This fall, experts in Europe, Canada and the United States have unlocked some of the carvers’ secrets for new books, an online database and a traveling exhibition. The show, “Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures,” opens on Saturday at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, and it will travel next year to the Met Cloisters and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. (The Art Gallery of Ontario has published an exhibition catalog, and the Rijksmuseum its own lavish study, “Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries.”)

Scientists, historians and conservators have analyzed about 135 carvings, some made as early as the 1450s, using CT scans and other tests. Most of the objects are in the form of rosary beads and spherical pendants, often with hinged halves that open to reveal tableaus. The outer shells have tracery in interlocking circle patterns, resembling rose windows in Gothic churches. The research teams also studied miniature boxwood coffins, statuettes, skulls, altarpieces and boxes in the shape of pea pods.

The original woodcarvers used foot-powered lathes, magnifying glasses made of quartz, and miniature chisels, hooks, saws and drills. The works were so detailed that individual feathers are visible on angel wings, and dragon skins are textured with thick scales. Crumbling shacks are shown with shingles missing from their gabled roofs. Crenelated spires have scalloped molding tucked along their doorways, and there are deep grout lines between bricks. Saints’ robes and soldiers’ uniforms are trimmed with buttons and embroidery, and there are nearly microscopic representations of jewelry and rosary beads.

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A prayer bead, opened to reveal religious scenes (circa 1500 to 1530).CreditThomson Collection/Art Gallery of Ontario

The carvers dabbed gilding on the honey-colored wood, and made some of the components movable. Peas inside the pea pods have their own hinged lids. Bird cages are full of minuscule doves that move about. In the exhibition catalog, Barbara Drake Boehm, a senior curator at the Cloisters, and Alexandra Suda, a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, point out that “the doves shake within their cage, creating an astonishing kinetic effect.”

In the Rijksmuseum’s new book, Frits Scholten, a senior sculpture curator, explains that boxwood proved ideal for these feats of carving because it is dense and durable and can develop “an evenly soft and tactile surface when polished.” Boxwood was also believed to have religious associations; it was said to have been incorporated into timber frames for ancient buildings in the Holy Land and into the cross used to crucify Jesus.

The most complicated boxwood carvings, researchers have discovered, contain numerous gossamer sheets. Separate layers were used to depict different figures and portions of the scenery. The components were pegged, pinned and glued together in such a way that the assemblages appear to have been carved from single chunks of wood. To create high-relief details in crevices that were hard to reach, tools were snaked through slits that were concealed in representations of ribbed ceilings and saints’ clothing.

The undersides of some objects, however, reveal that carvers cut corners, or perhaps delegated less interesting tasks to apprentices. In the Art Gallery of Ontario catalog, the conservators Pete Dandridge and Lisa Ellis describe roughly hewn bases, “odd-sized bits of wood” and slightly misshapen, asymmetrical components that have been found on altarpieces and triptychs. Multiple drill holes suggest measurements had to be redone and mistakes corrected.

Some original owners are identifiable, based on initials and coats of arms inscribed alongside snippets of prayers, hymns and biblical quotations. Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon had their own portraits incorporated into their boxwood rosary; they are shown watching a Eucharistic ritual. Catherine apparently kept the beads after the couple divorced and Henry banned the use of rosaries. (The strand now belongs to Chatsworth House in Britain.)

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A miniature altarpiece depicting the Virgin Mary in the sun (circa 1510 to 1530).CreditRijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Around 1500, a Delft resident, Adam Dircksz, signed one sphere that is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark, in Copenhagen. Scholars have not yet determined whether Dircksz ran a boxwood workshop or was a patron who wanted his name emblazoned on his acquisition.

The buyers would show off their boxwood sculptures as status symbols to friends, but did not handle them much. Mr. Scholten writes that the wood surfaces “show barely any traces of wear.”

Subsequent owners and dealers are known to have made drastic repairs and adaptations. They added feet and side panels to boxwood carvings, turned interior reliefs upside down and cobbled together mismatched halves into single beads.

In recent years, a few major works in the field have surfaced at auction. In 2007, a boxwood Crucifixion scene brought $109,000 at Christie’s in New York. Sotheby’s in London sold a boxwood altarpiece with a Nativity scene for about $53,000 in 2010, and also handled the sales of two spheres depicting Jesus’ death: one for around $215,000 in 2012, and another for around $141,000 in 2013.

Through Jan. 8, a boxwood sphere containing scenes of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection is on view at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in the exhibition “A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C28 of the New York edition with the headline: Doggedly Unlocking the Intricate Secrets of Boxwood Miniatures. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe